I am fond of pigs

Feynman's quote goes HARD. full on 1 sentence diss track to authoritarianism!

Sure, I'll try!

There is nothing inherently wrong about borders. You're probably very happy your house has a border. Wolf packs have borders. Borders are useful.

As I see it, borders are physical manifestations of a social construct. You know, like money, flags, medals, wedding gowns, etc etc. And just like all of these, borders have a social purpose for the tribe within. In their case it's to distinguish between "us" and "them". Why make that distinction? Because tribes must pool their resources to thrive. That includes material things like food and shelter, but also immaterial resources like labor, safety, clean water, you name it.

But sharing has two hard requirements: reciprocity and trust. Without either, you cannot pool your resources without risk of getting taken advantage of. Why invest in a common good that might not be there for you when YOU need it? That's why reciprocity and trust are so fundamental to human relations! We built an entire society about signals of trust, about showing other people you are "us" and not "them".

Long story short, tribes ("us") guard their pooled resources from outsiders ("them"). That's why Germans can't collect their pension from Mongolian state funds. Nationalities, then, are a shorthand for calculating whether a person has contributed to a tribe's resources and is therefore an "us".

There's a ton of valid(!) arguments to be made about which kinds of borders are fair, or which immigrants deserve our pooled resources. But that's not my point here, I'm here to argue that visa are useful and serve a purpose (which is not bullying outsiders, but protecting INsiders)

Misremembering lyrics and making them up is accurate to the medium!

Dirk Gently is written by people who read Checkhov's Gun on Wikipedia and then went "how many of these bad boys can we stack on top of each other?" What a rollercoaster of a series

now we are ready to head for the horn

Yea, I love it here

I'm fully convinced that in 50 years we will be STUNNED that this was normal once. Just like lobotomies, or smoking in schools.

You're out of your element here!

GNU pratchett

Arguably, the Patrician is less authoritarian than the current US head of state. Yes, Vetinari is a Machiavellian despot, but there's no great leader retorica, no prestige projects, no saber rattling, no lavish court, no scapegoating, and he doesn't bend or break society to fit his ideals (although there's tons of nudging and quid pro quo).

This is because he's every powerful party's second choice, he would promptly be removed if he upset the delicate dance of Morporkian oligarchy.

See the crowd swing and sway while you're treading the air-

Ah, you dont really want an explanation. You wanr to be mad.